Never forgetting
by Rainripple
Summary: "They cared Law. It was wrong, it was all wrong. But that's why we were together in the first place. The world couldn't forgive any of us for being born so we survived together. How could we have survived for so long if none of us cared?" Based off a post by Vyragosa on tumblr.


Baby 5 is just as jovial as all the other pirates on the Yonta Maria right up till the moment where Straw hat commences the feast with a cheer and she catches onto the word 'family'.

 _Family_.

Suddenly she's deaf to the cheers of the party and she's plunged into some deep, pensive thought about all the things that have gone wrong.

She remembers the hardships her biological family went though, the burden that forced them to abandon her. She remembers when Doflamingo first found her and she remembers the soft pink feathers of his coat that he'd wrapped around her as he carried her to his ship. She remembers meeting everyone in the Donquixote family and she remembers the years as she grew up and started becoming a valuable asset to the family instead of a useless burden.

She remembers when _Law_ first arrived. She remembers all the times Corazon threw him out of the window and how every single time left him no less angry and certainly with no trace of fear. She remembers Doflamingo officially accepting him into the family and she remembers when he finally started acting like an actual family member, _a brother_.

And yes, she remembers all those events too, those ones that ended up losing them two family members, one dead and one lost in the midst of the action.

She acknowledges that Law was a traitor, that he was the one who instigated the whole fiasco that winded up with Doflamingo locked up in a marine ship and yet she still can't stop thinking of him as her brother.

She's ashamed that she forgot about the good times in her life in the past 3 days. She hadn't had amnesia but just being with Sai had made her forget that Doflamingo _had_ been the best thing in her life. Doflamingo had been her saviour and the father he never had and what had she done?

She'd let her inhibitions and one man (he was the _enemy for goodness sakes_ ) lead her astray and twist her perception on who was the enemy. She hadn't actively plotted against Doflamingo but she might as well have just had shoved a gun down his throat and fired the bullet.

As far as she was concerned, she was as much of a traitor as Law was. Only she and Law were free and if it wasn't for the tears beginning to roll out the corners of her eyes, she would have laughed at the sheer _irony_ that the traitors were the ones left free and not the righteous.

Doflamingo used to tell her stories all the time about traitors, traitors that would always end up dead usually by execution and her? Here she was soon to be married and _fucking celebrating the defeat of her foster-father._

Baby 5 is simply disgusted at herself. She's despairing, self-loathing and no longer triumphant. Nobody's notices her slide out of the main picture as she finds herself metaphorically crawling to her fellow traitor in arms.

Law says nothing as she clutches the back of his ruined jacket and begins to sob. There's only a tattered hole in the back where a Jolly Roger and the word Corazon used to be and it only makes her more melancholy. Corazon was a traitor too and if it wasn't for him, none of this would have happened and they still could have been a happy family.

"They cared Law. It was wrong, it was all wrong." There's uncontrolled pauses and sniffs in between her choked out sentences. "But that's why we were together in the first place. The world couldn't forgive any of us for being born so we survived together. How could we have survived for so long if none of us cared?"

She doesn't expect an answer and she doesn't get one, only a hug that's meant to be reassuring and a murmured "We're free."

Law is lying. He knows he'll never feel free as long as Doflamingo is still alive. Even if he is locked in Impel down, he'll never be able to shake the paranoia that one day Doflamingo will escape and come to kill him and reverse the revenge he tried to take for Corazon, that he'll finish the fight once and for all and _win._

Some days he'd wake up after dreaming about a distant memory of when he had been together with all the rest of the misfits that had once upon a time been his replacement, dysfunctional family. And then he finds himself almost wishing that he could go back to when he wasn't so fucked up, back to when everything was right.

It's frustrating to think that he could have grown up to be a sadistic, depraved man just like Doflamingo (just like he used to wish to be ugh) and that would mean his hatred would have been aimed at something else. He would have just been another of Doflamingo's loyal pawns and in this instance, his hatred would have been aimed at a wider audience.

He would have hated the world instead of the man who had killed his most cherished man and he doesn't know what would have been worse.

His desire to get back at Doflamingo has been fuelling him for at least the past decade. It forces him to endure his PTSD triggered nightmares, forces him to carry on standing on only a couple of cups of coffee and it forces him to _keep getting stronger._ It's an ugly thing but he can't deny that's what's been stopping himself from giving up on life when the going gets tough.

It was never completely for his own sake.

It was all for Cora.

He's still trying to comprehend who was the omnipotent being that decided that Doflamingo was the sibling that should have lived not Corazon. Why him?

His chat with Sengoku earlier before they escaped is still fresh in his memory and he knew he was trying to be reassuring, trying to help Law get free like Corazon wanted him to but it simply wasn't enough.

He's been hell bent on revenge for so long that it's practically ingrained in him now and he's going to have a hard time adapting to not having it be the centre of his life. In fact he's still not satisfied yet; as far as he's concerned, he's still not finished his mission.

Cora-san wanted to stop him but Law wanted to kill him and he's certain that Doflamingo isn't dead yet.

Even if he drinks away his sorrows at this party, he'll never forget about Doflamingo, about Cora, about anything in his life.

It's impossible for him to forget about his scars.


End file.
